Wednesday, April 6, 2011

It seems like it was just last week that the CMI team stepped off the plane from Hannover where they presented our newest collection Terra, and we’re already immersed in developing another new line of hand-knotted carpets for a new collection. Our team is ever expanding and this year we decided to take a fresh approach to creating a collection by creating 2 series’ of hand-painted and hand-drawn markings as inspiration for our new pieces.

In a field where we can easily utilize the computer and Wacom tablet as our tool of choice, we made the decision to “return to our roots” so to speak, and pick up a paintbrush. We chose to flex our artistic muscles with a series of “art days” where the entire team (office managers and accountant included) participated in intensive 3-hour sessions of painting, drawing and general mark making. And the results were fabulous!

We worked with different grounds like mulberry paper (wet and dry), watercolour paper and news print and covered them in India ink, charcoal,wax and paint. It was messy and brilliant and resulted in over 230 paintings and drawings. From there we collectively created 168 working concepts and were able to whittle these down to a collection of 7.

Now we’re on to the sampling process and with eager anticipation await their arrival! Creative Matters hopes to launch our still unnamed collection at the New York International Carpet Show and then at Domotex 2012. Times are changing and interesting things are happening at our little studio on Annette Street. Stay tuned!